Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of female action heroes (2nd nomination)

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. Article is signaled as problematic (and not just in terms of cleanup), but this AfD finds no consensus to delete and some pretty strong keep votes--and that makes the decision clear. Drmies (talk) 05:00, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List of female action heroes

AfDs for this article:
List of female action heroes (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)
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As it stands, this list contains an indiscernible mix of real people and fictional characters. Are we saying that any woman who is an athlete is an action hero? Any woman who is a movie star and appears in some action films (or parodies thereof)? Any female fictional character who takes some heroic action at some point in their fictional universe? This was nominated for deletion in 2011; the problems raised then regarding original research, subjectivity, and lack of sources, remain unresolved. bd2412 T 16:23, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

  • Delete. As original nom in 2011, I still contend that this list fails WP:LSC. The criteria for inclusion is unclear. Much of the list is unsourced. There are redundant entries. And included entries seem to contradict each other a little. One part is a list of real actresses that have played roles that could be considered by some as "action heroes" while another part is the characters. Which are we talking about? I previously removed a bunch that were "action heroes" because in one episode they punched someone or shot a gun. It's worth noting that the male version of this list was nominated at the same time and deleted. [1] This one has the same issues as it did 4 years ago and, in some aspects, has gotten worse. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:40, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Fictional elements-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:46, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:46, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep but needs major cleanup. The concept of female action heroes in fiction is a completely fair topic, however, that should be a definition of the character from third-party sources. The list of actresses in this should not be present, and the remaining entries should all either be blue links to a notable character page where it is clear the character is an action hero, or a source on non-notable characters that affirms the character is an action hero. The inability to keep it maintained well is not really a fair argument to delete, just that it needs more eyes to keep it maintained. --MASEM (t) 18:07, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • While the topic might be notable, the list completely lacks inclusion criteria. Police brutality is a notable topic too, but that didn't keep that list from being deleted and the deletion affirmed in DELREV. Too many things are included here just because some reviewers used the term "action hero" in passing and that's problematic. WP:TNT argues that sometimes starting over is the answer. Niteshift36 (talk) 18:38, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'd have to argue that the Police brutality list (which I just looked over the XFD and DRV arguments) is a very different case, for two major reasons: first, that the labelling appeared to be at the discretion of editors rather than sources, and second, that there's BLP and related issues in calling some acts as police brutality if there is no clear way to discern this from sources. It thus makes for a very problematic list, and as the DRV noted, the concensus to overtune was mixed. I get a read that the list could be recreated iff there was a stronger inclusion metric. In this case, calling a female character an action hero is in no way anywhere close to BLP, but does require sourcing to affirm that that character should be treated as such, which is missing here. I don't see a problem if that a character is called an action hero by just one normally-reliable review source, as long as that's a requirement to be included. I suspect the list will not be as bad as it is now if one applies that standard, as there's a lot of characters that are coming from works that don't have as much significance (like anime) in most English press to gain that type of terminology on a per-character basis. --MASEM (t) 18:59, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The point of the comparison was that merely being a notable topic isn't what we should be looking at. Niteshift36 (talk) 21:09, 25 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. The topic itself is surely notable ([2], [3], [4], [5], [6]), but I don't quite see the point in listing a bunch of fictional characters. It doesn't help to illustrate the topic or serve any real encyclopedic purpose that I can think of. Isn't this what TV Tropes is for? And yet just about pop culture topic on Wikipedia has a list associated with it, and it's probably possible to find some kind of sourcing for this. So, I guess either result is fine: rewrite or deletion. If the debate closes as "keep but rewrite", then I guess I'll try to remember to work on it. NinjaRobotPirate (talk) 04:10, 26 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    NinjaRobotPirate, I can help you out. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 16:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Delete, due to being an wp:indiscriminate list of anybody who appeared in an action film regardless as an support actress or have just once. The bigger problem is that it is unsourced, plus Bridget Jones and Gwen Stacy a full-on action star? Also Jennifer Lawrence and Scarlett Johansson is listed for (legitimately) being in just one franchise that qualify them as such, are we going to list Harry Potter as an action hero next? (oh yeah, it has) Also get rid of action hero as well for the same reason. Donnie Park (talk) 17:00, 27 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep The topic clearly passes WP:LISTN as there are dozens of books about it including:
  1. Gender Schema Theory and the Tough Female Action-hero
  2. Super Bitches and Action Babes: the female hero in popular cinema
  3. The Female Action Hero in Film
  4. Female Action Heroes: a guide to women in comics, video games, film, and television
  5. Fight Like a Girl: The Female Action Hero in Hollywood
  6. Women Willing to Fight: The Fighting Woman in Film
  7. Action Chicks: New Images of Tough Women in Popular Culture
  8. Modern Amazons: Warrior Women on Screen
  9. The Warrior Women of Television: A Feminist Cultural Analysis of the New Female Body in Popular Media
  10. Reel Knockouts: Violent Women in Film
  11. The Violent Woman as a New Theatrical Character Type

The rest is then a matter of ordinary editing, not deletion. AFD is still not cleanup. Andrew D. (talk) 18:19, 27 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • There is a difference between the concept of a Female action hero, which could use an article based on those sources, and a List of them, which would require the determination of objective standards of inclusion. bd2412 T 18:28, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
  • No, there's no great difference. To work on any topic at any level, you obviously have to have some idea of what it is or what it means but you could say that about anything. It doesn't seem be a significant problem in this case because we have numerous sources to draw from. These sources list major examples such as Sarah Connor — no problemo. Andrew D. (talk) 20:42, 27 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Are the sources listing archetypal examples, or purporting to offer exhaustive (or at least authoritative) lists? A list limited to examples noted in sources, even though the type is not usually noted, is likely to be incomplete and unable to be completed. An incomplete group of sourced examples seems more suited for a "noted examples of" section in an article. bd2412 T 22:03, 27 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Different sources will approach the topic in different ways. Again, this is quite normal for all topics and so is not a problem. Andrew D. (talk) 10:22, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • BD214 is correct, there is a difference between the notability of an article on the concept of a female action hero and a largely unsourced list of haphazard names. Niteshift36 (talk) 03:23, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, BD2412 is just raising facile objections which are easily addressed by ordinary editing. The only problem is the usual one of no-one being prepared to do any serious, hard work but that's quite normal on Wikipedia where 99% of our content is not of good quality. None of this amounts to a reason to delete because the page does, in fact, contain numerous substantial sources. Please start using them. Andrew D. (talk) 10:22, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • First, saying nobody is willing to do work is nonsense. I spent time on that article years ago, trying to clean up duplication and eliminate obviously wrong entries. Even tried to maintain it for a while, but the list is a magnet for fanboys and I'm not going to make the list a full time job. Second, instead of complaining about the work others aren't doing, I'll ask what you've done to improve the article. You know what else is very common on Wikipedia? Editors who vote to keep an article with the claim that all the article needs is improvement and then never does the hard work of improving it. See WP:SEP. Niteshift36 (talk) 16:01, 28 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • If this is kept, the "ordinary editing" that I will do is to delete every unsourced statement in the article, split it into three sub-articles (one for a list of sourced actresses who play action heroines, one for a list of fictional action heroine characters, and one for the concept of the female action hero, to which the "further reading" will go), and to semi-protect those pages to prevent "fanboys" from making unsourced additions, which will then need to go through the respective talk pages to be added. bd2412 T 16:34, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Keep as a notable list topic (having implemented two list sources just now) per WP:NOTESAL. The article is indeed largely a mess, but it is so easy to find sources that we can all contribute a few referenced names, remove the unsourced content and link to it on the talk page in case anyone wants to do further research. Erik (talk | contrib) (ping me) 16:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and cleanup. This is a useful list topic, but at the moment it seems too unfocussed. I vote to come up with strict inclusion criteria (which I am unqualified to do) and then clean up the list based on that. If that's too hard, my second choice is to rework it into a category, possibly with subcategories. De Guerre (talk) 23:16, 30 November 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Keep and cleanup – Passes WP:LISTN, because female action heroes have been discussed as a group or set by independent reliable sources. See source examples posted above by Andrew Davidson for starters. North America1000 02:21, 2 December 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
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